VII
by doodlebug-nimbus
Summary: Cloud can't keep resisting the Reunion forever.


She knew she should've been focusing on more important matters, but the only thing she found herself thinking was, _Why am I so itchy?_

No matter how much she scratched her inner left arm, the itch continued to tickle right underneath her skin. Even with her claws protracted, the itch persisted. Sometimes it'd flare up worse, and a strange throbbing slid up and done the bones of her arm while chills wormed their way down her spine. At one point after the throbbing occurred once again, she scratched especially deep and felt something solid, something that felt _alive_, press against her claws. Afterward, she quit scratching when the throbs manifested.

Tifa was too distracted with a clone who had parked themselves in front of an unfinished house. Like the others they had seen, this one was moaning and twitching uncontrollably—and from the noises, Cloud guessed it was a woman. But even before the woman started crying out, Cloud knew. She could've sworn her groaning was familiar, though she hurriedly dismissed the idea.

Tifa, after staring at the clone rock back and forth against the door for an uncomfortably long time, bent over and pulled back the hood, and the two of them gasped at the waves of silvery, greasy hair that spilled over the clone's shoulders. The woman seemed slightly startled, jerking her head toward Tifa, saying in a low, slurred voice, "H-huh? What…what did…you do?"

"Oh, Gods, she looks like him," Tifa pointed to her, as if Cloud needed her to take notice. Sure enough, Sephiroth was looking back and forth between the two, listless, disoriented. His features were a hint softer, and there was none of the feverish viciousness in his green eyes (and one of them drooped more than the other) Cloud had noted a while ago in the real one. The pupils were dilated, and it appeared that she was developing cataracts in both. "Do they all look like him underneath?"

_Great, now she's staring at me_, Cloud thought, annoyed and somewhat uncomfortable. Even if she wasn't actually him, Cloud wondered if through some freak form of symbiosis, he could see through the clone's eyes—after all, he could possess them whenever he felt like. _But he's done it to me…No, don't think like that! I'm nothing like the clones._ She remembered suddenly some of the worst nightmares she had in recent years, and they all seemed to be bits and pieces of Sephiroth's own memories. _But how…no, there has to be another reason…I'm nothing like the clones, I still know who I am, I can think and speak coherently. All of them are vegetables._

A slimy voice, like a hoarser version of her own, rang out from the depths of her subconscious. _What happened two days ago after you ran into a clone?_

_Shut up._ She buried the voice as quickly as she could; she didn't need more doubt when her mental state was all over the place.

"Uh, Cloud?"

She returned to Nibelheim from her wandering thoughts, finding that the clone had latched onto her leg. Surprisingly, her grip was like an iron lock.

"What the hell—get off of me!" With fleeting rage, she kicked the clone off of her, glaring at her as she crumpled to the ground. She lay there, as useless as a wet rag, then started to pick herself up. Tifa drew closer to Cloud, presumably in case the situation soured. Cloud faced her, saying, "What was up with that?"

Her friend shrugged, a fearful glint in her red eyes. "I don't know. She was watching you for a while, and it looked like you were staring back at her—like the two of you were in a trance. I tried calling you, but you didn't move. Then her pupils constricted and she started crawling towards you…I don't know what she was trying to do by holding onto you like that."

"You don't think…she was trying to meld with me, do you? Like what we saw back in Junon?"

"I thought they only did that to each other?"

Cloud's heart plummeted. Immediately she threw up a suggestion to deny her fears. "Well, we never did see another instance of that, uh, flesh merge or whatever. There might've been something unique about those two." _Weren't they mother and daughter? Oh, it doesn't matter, they're dead anyway…_

Perhaps that was what Cloud hated the most about the clones, how they represented the nothingness a person could be reduced to so simply and easily. Everything in their lives—their hobbies, their personalities, their identities, their dreams—gone, wiped from memory and replaced with an insane desire to fuse with a psycho bioweapon incapable of feeling emotions. Nothing beyond this desire. How…meaningless, all of it was, how they were the absurdity of humanity…It all disgusted her on a visceral level.

The mother and daughter didn't even recognize each other. They only spoke of their "master". Cloud slashed through them as an act of mercy. Blood that splattered on her skin burned, bubbling her flesh, as though her own body was reacting negatively to their essence. Thankfully the rest of her party hadn't seen her in that moment, otherwise they would've either abandoned her or killed her on sight.

_Maybe that was a hallucination, too… _It was becoming more and more difficult to distinguish between dream, memory, and reality. She wandered the planet in a sort of hazy, empty state, only doing things because someone told her to or because she felt like she had to. No volition of her own. She didn't even feel anything at this point, maybe the occasional jolt of dull surprise, granted, but she hadn't truly felt anything since she got to Midgar. And on top of that, she didn't even remember how she got to the city. She just…appeared. Maybe she had the capacity to distort space and time like him? She didn't know.

_Another trait I probably share with him—delightful. Maybe Sephiroth is just another part of me or another hallucination altogether. I wouldn't care at this point. I just want…everything to end already._

And now that she pondered it, a lot of her problems reminded her of what she hated about the clones.

_That's what you really hate about them, isn't it? It's like looking into a mirror, isn't it? You want to destroy anything pertaining to yourself, don't you?_

_Shut up! Shut up and stop thinking about that nonsense! You're just making yourself worse!_ She wanted to tear out her hair in frustration, to scream, to cry—to do something drastic. Instead, she idled, feeling herself express that vapid, vacant gaze she bore whenever she wasn't concentrating. She wanted to hit herself, she was so stupid. So stupid and so useless, so trivial as a person. She doubted her own "friends" would remember her in a week or two if she died right now.

She shuddered, glancing at Tifa, who was again prodding the clone like she was analyzing a lab specimen.

_Would they have killed me if I ended up like her? If I ended up like them?_ she thought, musing over the scene in Junon. She remembered the aghast expression on Tifa's face after Cloud had killed the mother and daughter. When she mentioned that there was nothing they could do for them, she looked dejected, like she still vainly held onto some impossibility that salvation for them was a choice. Cloud never liked that blind optimism in Tifa. She saw it as unrealistic and childish—to keep on smiling even in the face of imminent death—oh, how it clawed at her insides.

The clone was mumbling something to Tifa, something about the "master". She focused on her with such intensity that Cloud felt a pang of envy in her dead heart, as she had never seen such earnest investment whenever she talked to her. Then she thought of something.

_Maybe…Maybe I would have had to kill her, had things gone slightly differently—I might've had to kill my mother if things had gone differently._ Now she regretted what she was thinking, and again she berated herself for her rotten mind. _Gods, I feel like I'm two different people at once. I don't even really know if these horrible thoughts are my own…Am I really that terrible of a person?_

_Maybe I am. I'm not even good at pretending to be a person._ She glimpsed at her claws, retracting them in shame. _I wonder if Sephiroth has claws…_

"Who is this 'Number 7' you keep mentioning?" Tifa said. The hair on the nape of Cloud's neck suddenly shot up. Something snapped within her, and Cloud drew closer, curious. Number 7 was oddly familiar. Someone she might've known at one point. Then again, the naming convention implied they were one of the clones, and she hadn't truly "known" a clone—that was impossible in their cases. She hadn't seen a Number 7 anywhere on the bodies of the clones they had already encountered, though she had seen plenty of the other roman numerals branded on their arms and back. A new emotion, something she hadn't experienced in a very long time, almost primal in nature, gripped her shoulders with its powerfully sharp talons: ice cold fear.

The clone had stopped mewling about Sephiroth, and her pupils dilated again at the mention of Number 7. A skewed smile rose up on her face while she closed her eyes, reminiscing. It was the first time either of them had seen a clone express something more complex than pained nothingness.

"Friend…Number 7 was…my friend…"

"What! You mean you…you had friends? And you remember that?" Tifa leaned forward, like this information was vital for her survival.

"I don't…know what happened…to her—don't…remember?" She searched their surroundings for something unknown to Cloud and Tifa, frowning. "But…I-I can, I can feel…her here…Oh, she probably…doesn't even—forgotten Number…9…ugh…" Her brow scrunched as she winced, probably in agony from trying to use whatever was left of her mind.

But, she had managed something somewhat remarkable for a clone—she remembered her name, even if it wasn't her true name. She had some fragments of her identity; Cloud wondered if she was an exception, but her capacity to remember suggested that it wasn't impossible for clones to be something more than a toy for Sephiroth to curb stomp.

She had also caught the mention of Number 9, chills shooting throughout her body. _I wish it didn't sound familiar…_

"Isn't that interesting, Cloud?" Tifa faced her, probing her eyes, peering into her soul, now on the hunt for something she had convinced herself of. Cloud didn't want to hear it. "Do you think there are any other clones out there that are still somewhat human?"

She swallowed, her throat was parched. "No."

...

He wasn't there when they finally went into the mansion, like they had expected.

"This is fantastic. Now even the clones are lying to us?" Cloud said as they searched every inch, wiping the sweat off her brow. The mansion air was stale and frigid, yet she was sweating. That made her more nervous. "Damn, to think that they'd be useful for even one thing…"

She motioned for everyone to group up, and after explaining her idea, sent a majority of the party off to the next town. Only her, Tifa, and Aerith remained.

Tifa couldn't mask her unease anymore and asked, "Why are we staying here?"

"I need to figure out what's really going on here—since I feel his presence here, and yet—"

"He's somewhere else." Aerith seemed as confused as Cloud was. "There's something here, it's just…I have no clue as to what it could be if it's not Sephiroth."

"Is it something evil?" Tifa wrung her fingers, glancing around the mansion's first floor as if expecting a surprise attack.

Aerith shook her head. "Hard to say. It's nothing like what I've sensed from monsters or douchebags, but I don't want to say it has a good aura, either."

Cloud absentmindedly started to scratch her left arm again. An urge pulled at her heart to dig deeper into her arm, to scratch until it was bleeding, raw, muscles exposed, to scratch until she had successfully clawed to the bone, until the itch was gone for certain. But she refused.

The hum in the back of her mind was growing, becoming impossible to ignore. If she listened carefully enough, faint voices could be heard.

_Reunion…_

_Return…to…Sephiroth…_

Something now stirred within her chest. She stepped away from Aerith and Tifa, closer to where the voices beckoned her back outside. Sweat dripped off her chin, but she still shivered.

_Master…Sephiroth? Join the…Reunion…Be one with…_

If it wasn't for the wrinkle in the mansion's carpet for her to trip and almost fall over, she would've wandered outside. Coming to, she noticed that the other girls hadn't picked up on what she was doing—or at the very worst, she was too disoriented to properly perceive reality, and the others did notice, but didn't want to tell her for whatever reason. She didn't know which interpretation was worse.

Tifa blinked, looking over to where Aerith stood. "Think there's something in the library?"

"Only one way to find out." Aerith raised her staff and nodded toward the basement's stairwell, determination blazing in her eyes. "Let's go."

...

Cloud couldn't focus on anything. Her mind was being swallowed up by a darkness that scared her more than anything Sephiroth could have thrown at her—simplicity.

If she wasn't paying close attention, she couldn't understand what either Aerith or Tifa were saying. Titles on book spines were a mess of indecipherable symbols, the ugly black ink hurting her eyes. There were only a few words remaining pure in her mind.

_The great…Sephiroth…Join Sephiroth and become…_

She wanted to beg the other two for help, but she doubted they could do anything about her situation, besides restraining her if she tried to find him alone. They couldn't fix her, and as much as she wished it wasn't true, this desire…it was a part of her, it was what she was. Not who—she doubted that she was ever truly human in the first place, there were too many things about her that were incompatible with humanity. Humans didn't phase through walls or floors, humans didn't levitate a few feet off the ground at random intervals, humans didn't have eyes that changed colors or changed pupil shape…

Maybe she should've asked them to kill her. She would finally be free.

"Look at this," Aerith said, dragging Cloud's mind out of her thoughts. She looked to where they were standing; three bookshelves separated them, and in front of the shelf farthest away from her, Tifa and Aerith were huddling over a comically-huge black book. It wasn't as dusty as the others, and while similar in appearance to one of the many books that broke Sephiroth's psyche, it seemed newer, fresher. "It looks like something about the clones."

She opened it and, flipping through some of the pages, scrunched her brow in concentration. Her eyes lit up and she tilted the book toward the other girl as she said, "It is! Tifa, can you see that?" Tifa leaned forward with her mouth agape.

"'Number 9'—oh, Cloud! Come here!" Tifa glanced at her, beckoning her. When Cloud complied (albeit reluctantly), she pointed to a fuzzy black and white photograph taped onto the page Aerith had opened to. While the details were lost, the figure in the photograph was unmistakable: the condensed, sad form of a clone wrapped in a black cloak. Next to the photo were a bunch of arrows pointing to it, and the tails of the arrows led to a smudged paragraph.

_One of the only surviving females I have collected. There are two others besides Number 9, Number 10 and a defective one that Number 9 has attached itself to. Like the successful clones, it is beginning to assume his likeness…But what concerns me is that it demonstrates some level of awareness beyond the Reunion, like the one that shall not be named. It escapes me as to why that is, perhaps the other one has something to do with it…_

The rest of it was too marred to remain legible.

Aerith's face was twisted in rage. She was most likely remembering her own encounters with Hojo. "What's that defective one he keeps talking about? Are they still out there somewhere?"

"Sounds like he didn't even give them a number to identify them with. Unless, maybe later on, he would call them Number 7? After all, that's the one Number 9 kept talking about." Tifa stared at Cloud, who had gripped her arms a little too tightly. She was frigid to the touch, like a corpse that had been left in a river for days. Her deathly pale skin seemed greasy under the library lights. "You're awfully sickly looking, Cloud…"

Cloud didn't move immediately, as she was staring at something no one else had seen. While they were reading, she could've sworn she had seen a flash of silver hair near the stairwell, a black uniform—

"Cloud?"

She jerked her head toward them, flinching when Tifa screamed and Aerith jumped back in alarm.

"Your eyes! Something's wrong with your eyes!" Tifa cried, that same terror in her eyes when she had first seen Sephiroth in Shinra Headquarters. "What's gotten into you?"

Aerith stepped forward, now bewildered. She reached out, almost touching Cloud's cheek, but then pulling back when Cloud tried to move her hand away. "They're…changing?" She stared at her for a moment.

Tifa leaned in to see what she was talking about, and she was right. His eyes slowly morphed back into hers, though the fear in them never disappeared.

"What are you two talking about? My eyes never—"

"They were just like his, and for a second I thought you were—never mind."

"Y-you didn't see him?" She glanced back and forth between Aerith and Tifa. Their concerned confusion was not a welcome sight. "He was right there…I saw him!"

"Nobody else is in here with us. You sure you're alright? You look…bad." Aerith scrutinized her gaze before returning to the book. Judgement darkened her expression, and Cloud suddenly wanted to retreat into the wilderness to die alone, to get away from everything that was happening now. To escape her own life.

The urge to itch was spreading all over her body, gradually growing into that instinct to tear off her own skin, to sever flesh from bone, to free—

Free who?

Her muscles were boiling. The voices licked at her eardrums, and anything that wasn't in her immediate line of sight transformed into incoherent masses of mushy, multicolored blobs. Tremors ravaged her body, and again came that urge to rip her face off—

What's hiding underneath?

She started to drift away from them, the voices lulling her into a feverish stupor. She wanted to belong so badly, to have something she felt familiar with her, to have that warmth they stole from her long ago.

_Be one with Sephiroth. Become whole again by going to the Reunion and…fulfilling your purpose…_

"I found it! Number 7!" Cloud wasn't listening to what the others—especially Aerith—had to say, and they remained too invested in the black book to recognize what Cloud was doing. "See, Tifa, there's a picture and everything."

"What's it say? The words have been crossed out…"

"Well, the next page says, 'I have been too careless. Number 7 seems to transform back and forth from various identities, even into ones that I personally have never seen before. It has also, unfortunately, retained some of its memories, and every day I have to deal with its endless tears and remorse whenever it is in a state of lucidity. Efforts to induce the Reunion instinct have mostly failed, besides the most recent time when it had already shifted into his likeness. Perhaps that is the secret—to break its mind when its resolve is nonexistent…'"

"Is that why he didn't like Number 7? They were still too human?"

"This is…rather disappointing. I hoped we'd find more info on Number 7, but all we found were his complaints…"

The voices drowned out everything, including her thoughts.

...

She didn't budge when Sephiroth glared at her past his shoulder.

An unusual silence had settled over twilit Nibelheim. The voices calmed, being reduced to a distant, desperate purr for the "Master" that stood before her, his black uniformed figure a dark specter of the past.

She suspected he lured her out here, near the entrance of the town, so he could kill her easily and cleanly. If he made his move, she decided she wouldn't resist. Her existential suffering would be over, and she'd be released. Death was nicer than whatever was in store for something like her, like the remaining clones that followed the two of them, including Number 9.

She almost felt bad for Number 9. She must've been a nice woman before Hojo laid his disgusting hands on her.

"This is not exactly how I wanted this to pan out," he said, still as a statue. Cloud clenched and opened her hands, trying to ignore the writhing sensation burning under the skin of her left arm. The clones, oddly, were attracted to her and not him, constantly making their way up to her feet and begging her to be a part of the Reunion. Shrugging them off did little to help her situation—they merely came back, whining, crying. "But that is no longer important. After all, we are all here together, are we not?"

She remained transfixed on him. She wanted to move, but his empty gaze seemed to freeze every muscle in her body. Even if she could move, her sword had been lost somewhere a while ago.

Something was off. She looked more closely, and saw that he did not have Masamune with him.

He turned around, smiling. His gaze did not change.

The clones started clinging to her legs, moaning more loudly about the Reunion, looking like multiple cloaked Sephiroths trying to dog pile her. Any efforts to push them off resulted in tighter grips.

"Why try to resist your brethren, Cloud?"

"They—these—I'm not a clone!" She shouted it mostly to herself as a final affirmation, though the faint doubt hiding in her words betrayed what she wanted to happen. Sephiroth's smile widened, as if he had a similar realization.

"Is that so?" His voice was low, certain—the complete opposite of hers. "Then, answer me this."

His eyes appeared to glow more violently, and one of the clones latched onto her suddenly rose up and grabbed her left arm. She cried out, trying to pull away to no avail.

"What are you doing?" The clone protracted their own claws and slashed the bandages running up her arm. Once the old wraps fell away, they let go. "What is…"

Near her inner elbow, burned into her flesh as though she had been branded, was the Roman numeral seven.

"Why are you marked like the others?"

Cloud felt ill. Nothing was tangible to her anymore. "No! This isn't—this isn't who I am!" He was grinning now, narrowing his eyes. "This is just another one of your—ah!"

Sharp, searing pain enveloped her being, like she had fallen into a pit of lava. The clones were murmuring something indecipherable in excitement as they stepped back and she sank to her knees, her body shaking violently while painful, loud crunches began to erupt from all parts of her body. Her blood swam under the surface of her skin, screaming with the agony of life. Her organs stirred in preparation for something rapidly swelling within her chest.

Sephiroth observed the scene with distant pride, in the same way a mother would watch her child thrive. "Your time has come, Number 7."

A feminine note to his voice, not previously present, would've caught her attention had her skin not been torn by fresh arms and legs. Something—_someone_ was bursting out of her, ripping apart muscles, tendons, and ligaments as they did so, gushing blood everywhere, rupturing her spine, distorting her screams as her throat was slashed open, reducing her to tattered guts and tissue in their birth.

Cloud Strife was no more.

...

"We can't take him on, Tifa."

"I know. But we have no other choice but to try." Her voice was exhausted, hoarse, and it couldn't have been more clear that the only thing she wanted to do at this point was to surrender.

"We're the only ones here…" Aerith felt her staff fill the palms of her hands. It was awfully cold. Cold enough that it hurt. She wondered, briefly, if this was her final day. Two girls, one who used her hands to fight, and the other one, notoriously terrible when it came to actual combat, were going to go against a swordsman whose only familiarity in his life was violence. For a moment, cruel images of them sliced into unrecognizable, bloody chunks danced in her mind. Then her resolve galvanized, and she aimed the staff at the gory scene that sprawled out in front of them. "For the planet. For Cloud."

Tifa looked about to vomit when she mentioned Cloud.

...

They didn't know what to expect. His back was facing them, and his powerful figure was drenched in bright red. The decapitated bodies of the last few clones, interspersed with their heads, lay scattered around him. Though, curiously, if Aerith focused on the one farthest away from him, it seemed as though that one was allowed to keep their head, as they lay face-down on the ground, breathing unevenly. Tattered flesh was in heaps at his feet. She guessed that was what had become of Cloud, and her heart ached with newfound rage.

Masamune trembled in his grasp.

Tifa tried to keep herself as quiet as possible when she said a very tiny, "What?"

Within a second, Sephiroth snapped around and stared at her, delirium in his glossy eyes. He started to raise his sword, then his arm locked at his waist, trembling even more. She noticed he was wearing some sort of dark vest over his chest—something that he shouldn't have needed.

He suddenly spluttered, reaching for his throat with his other arm, a tortured expression rising on his ashen face. Tifa stumbled backward and Aerith came to her side, brandishing her staff protectively. Inky, viscous fluid began to seep from the corners of his mouth as he continued to choke, now clawing at his throat as though he was trying to tear out his vocal cords, while his eyes started to roll into the back of his head.

"What's he doing?" Tifa gave up trying to hide her panic and turned to Aerith. "What's he doing?"

Aerith studied him with an unusual calmness about her. She squinted. "I don't…think this is…"

He let go of Masamune to reach out to her, staggering forward as he continued to throttle himself. After a series of wet coughs that forced out more fluid, he looked down upon her with scared blue eyes. "Aer…ith? Ti…fa? Please…" His voice was horribly warped, incredibly raspy, and he couldn't finish his sentence before spewing even more of the black fluid onto the ground and hunching over, twitching. "Please…help me…"

Tifa shook her head, covering her mouth with her hands, eyes glistening. "It can't be…that isn't you, is it, Cloud? Please tell me…"

Her terrified eyes looked out of Sephiroth's face as she sunk to the floor in a kneeling position and started crawling closer to Tifa, trying to grab her legs whenever she stepped further back. She shivered, her face beginning to scrunch up, as if she were resisting the urge to cry. "Tifa… end me…please…it hurts…it hurts so much!"

At that a loud, almost slimy crunch shattered her back, and she yanked on locks of his hair to distract herself from the pain. Both tears and fluid spilled freely from her orifices now.

Aerith didn't know what to do, as neither did Tifa. But the latter lowered herself to Cloud's eye level and said in her best assuring voice, "We'll—we'll figure out something—we've got to—I have to save you somehow, I can't let you—"

"Tifa?" Cloud sat up, strangely alert with her eyes wide. "I need…to do…something…"

She glanced toward Masamune, which lay a few feet away.

"Cloud—"

She got to her feet, scrambling for his sword until her hands finally steadied on its hilt.

Tifa and Aerith ran over to her, but she simply moved farther away from them. Her head tilted as she stared at its long blade and ran her gloved fingers across its edge. The silver surface refracted twilit orange and purple, and she felt whatever was left of her mind slipping from her. Masamune was so beautiful…

"Cloud! What are you doing?"

She turned back to them, smiling a skewed, frenzied smile. Her blue irises surged back into his nuclear green ones. "Not Cloud…"

She raised the sword once again, managing to hold it high above her head. She was eying Tifa.

"Cloud!"

She blinked, and his eyes lapsed back into hers. Her arms twitched and she lowered the sword to her neck, so that the edge was right against her jugular. Her loopy smile had been exchanged for an apologetic one, and she furrowed her brow in sorrow as she searched Tifa's red eyes.

When she found what she had been looking for, she said, "There is…no Cloud. Not anymore. I am…Number 7."

"Cloud, please don't do this—"

"I'm sorry, Tifa…Maybe someday…you'll get to meet…the real Cloud…"

Before she could break down into another mess of tears, she slit her throat.


End file.
